UNDERSTANDING ISRAEL
Sharon Quits the Likud
 In a dramatic move, Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon left the Likud, together with 14 Likud members of Knesset, and founded a new party. The move, called in Israel "The Big Bang," has
forced the Knesset to schedule new elections in March.
Sharon's decision was not as sudden as he
would like people to believe. It was a carefully planned moved. The idea
first began to unfold when Sharon came to the conclusion that Israel
will have to decide on its borders unilaterally and disengage from the
Palestinians. Once Netanyahu resigned from the cabinet and led a
rebellion against Sharon in his own party to oppose this idea, it was just a matter of
finding the right moment to announce the move. The recent elections in the
Labor Party for a new head of the party, in which voters ousted Shimon Peres and brought Amir Peretz
to power, forced Sharon to make his move.
By creating a new centrist party, Sharon has
shattered the Israeli political scene as we have known it for the last
four
decades. The traditional division between Likud (right of center) and
Labor (left of center) is now gone. As of today, the division is Likud on
the far right, Labor on the far left, and Sharon in the center. This
division is a much better representation of the Israeli public than the
traditional Likud-Labor divide. For the last decade, the
majority of Israelis have believed in the need to evacuate the
heavily populated Palestinian territories, in creating a clear-cut border between the Israelis and the Palestinians, in transferring
budgets from security to social issues, and in keeping the lid on
government spending. The left-wing ideals of coming to terms with
the Palestinians (Oslo accords and similar) are not acceptable to most
of the public, as are the right-wing ideas of ruling over Palestinians
who are not citizens and do not have the rights of citizens.
The political parties, on the other hand, are
still fighting for agendas that much of the electorate does not
understand or identify with. This dissonance between the electorate and
the political parties could be seen very clearly in the last elections,
in which 20% of the voting population did not even bother to vote, an
unusually high percentage for Israel.
Sharon's reshuffling of the political arena
will flush out many of the ills of Israeli politics. For example, the predominance of
"central party committee" members, who have to be appeased with cushy
government jobs and contracts; the constant petty party bickering; and
the inability of governments to move forward on policies that the
majority of the Israelis agree on.
At present, the polls show that Sharon has
made the right move. Current polls show that if elections were held
today Sharon's party would win 28 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Labor
would win 28 seats, and the Likud would 18. If Sharon would have stayed in the Likud, he would have
won 38 seats - but he would still be faced with the rebels in his old
party. The interesting thing to note about the polls is that Sharon's
party and the Likud together would have 46 seats - 6 more than the Likud
headed by Sharon has today.
As the elections get nearer, many of the Likud voters who claim today that they will vote for Likud, will vote
for Sharon - just to make sure that Labor does not win the elections
(the head of the biggest party gets first shot at putting together a
government). "Voting against" is a very strong force in Israeli
politics. But, and this is a big but, four months is a long time in
Israeli politics and many things can change in the next 16 weeks. |
